


when the lights go out

by perhapssoon



Category: Splatoon
Genre: Angst, F/F, Inkblot, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, dont touch the strange black goo kids, fluff until everything gets super terrible, survivor's guilt, uhhhh bad things happen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 19:44:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19069408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perhapssoon/pseuds/perhapssoon
Summary: Three members of Orange Team contract Inkblot. Forge is left with the final decision.





	when the lights go out

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to [ RedEnhancers ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedEnhancers/pseuds/RedEnhancers) for this idea shdfjk

Forge has seen many things in her lifetime, but nothing as strange as this. As many times as she's flipped through her manual, she can't find any information on this puddle of black ink she's found on the side of the road. It's been bothering her so much that she woke up in the middle of the night with insomnia just to go back to check it out.

It was barely visible in the light given off by the streetlamps and she was just kneeling down to inspect it when a soft noise startles her.

"Forge?" Sailor White pads up behind her and Forge whips around, instinctively hiding the puddle by moving in front of it. "What're you doing?"

"Late night walk, is all," Forge says quickly, kissing her on the forehead. "What're you doing up?"

"Couldn't sleep," White says, and Forge nods sympathetically. She might not be able to investigate this goo pile tonight now that White is here; she has no idea why her initiative is to hide this from her girlfriend, but her instincts are usually right so she shifts to the right when White's gaze starts to stray.

"Me too. You want to go back inside?"

"Mm." White leans against her as they walk back to base. "I drank a bunch of tea before coming out here. I guess the night air did its work."

"Seems like it did," Forge says with a smile. "You're all sleepy."

"Shh." White closes her eyes briefly before looking up at Forge. "Can you carry me back?"

"Do you have energy to enter your squid form?"

White hums and pops into her squid form, Forge catching her before she hits the ground. Her girlfriend is asleep by the time she makes it back to White's room and Forge gently lays her on the bed. 

She feels almost guilty for going back outside, but her plans are foiled once more when Sailor Blue comes out of his room when she's walking past.

"What're you doing up?"

"Can't sleep."

Blue gives her That Look and Forge knows she isn't fooling him. They aren't twins, but they're close enough siblings that they can practically read each other's mind at this point. She supposes that he can tell she's on edge, which rules out the fact that she  _just_  can't sleep. "No. Why are you awake?"

Forge shifts slightly, mind whirling. What can she say? She doesn't want Blue to know about this, but if she lies, he'll tell Army and she can't risk that. Why is she so anxious? It's harmless research.

"I'm researching the effects of night air," she says, careful to make her voice slow and casual. "It's late night research, and I couldn't sleep until I figured it out." Surely he'd take it. They've all had their moments where they simply had to finish something and couldn't stop before they did it, even if it had to ruin their health. "Just don't tell Army. Please."

Blue frowns, but it's late and she can tell he wants to go back to sleep. "Alright. I won't tell him."

"Thank you."

Forge turns back to her mission: take notes on that black goo.

It's right where she left it, thankfully, not that it could walk around somewhere else, anyway. She crouches next to it again, reaching out with a pencil to poke at it. It has the same consistency as regular ink, but she can't be too sure. Her pencil drips black ink onto her manual as she writes but she takes no notice of it.

After about ten minutes of investigating, the black goo doesn't seem that abnormal, other than the color, really. She's vaguely disappointed but still apprehensive about something beyond her. Her research hasn't gone anywhere but she records everything in her manual before heading back to base.

\---

That morning, White wakes her with a kiss and breakfast. "Hurry up and come to the kitchen! We're getting an early start on training today, so you better get your cute butt outta bed!"

Forge yawns and sits up, tentacles spilling over her covers. It takes her only a few minutes to tug on her clothes, brush her teeth, grab her manual and head out the door. Army is waiting for her in the kitchen, busying himself with washing the dishes when she walks up to him.

"Good morning, Forge. Did you have a nice sleep?"

"I did, sir, thank you." She stands there at attention before he waves a sudsy hand, allowing her to relax. 

"I hope White told you we're heading out early?"

"She did, sir."

"Good. Did you already eat?"

"Yes sir."

Blue comes into the room then and glances at her coat. She follows his gaze to see black goo seeping through the pocket of her jacket, the pocket where she keeps her manual.  
"Is there something wrong?" Army turns off the faucet and looks over at her, Forge quickly angling her body so her leader can't see the growing stain.

"No sir. Nothing."

Blue looks from her to Army and back again, and opens his mouth right as White comes in and literally bowls him over with her energy. 

"Blue! There you are, silly! You ready for practice?"

"I'm always ready," Blue says with a slight smile. "Are you?"  
"Of course!" White hops over to Forge and kisses her on the cheek by standing on tiptoe. "I guess I woke you up, but I never got to say good morning, so good morning!"

"Good morning," Forge responds. White is awfully close to seeing the manual, and as long as she doesn't look down--

"Forge, why is your jacket all dark?"

"Sorry?" Her hearts leap out of her chest and start to hammer mindlessly as White crouches to inspect her jacket pocket.

"Did you spill something in your pocket?" she asks innocently and Forge quickly backs away, turning away so White can't see it. 

"N-no, there's-- there's nothing there."  
"White, what are you saying?" Army questions and White gestures to Forge.

"Her jacket seems a bit stained."  
"Can I see it?" Army walks over to Forge, who instinctively backs away. "Don't worry about it if it's just stained, Forge. I would just like to see it, please."

"I--" she catches Blue's gaze and he nods slightly to her. She sighs and shifts sideways so Army can see the black goo dripping through her jacket.

"That--- looks like you spilled something. What's in your pocket?"

"Just my manual, sir." She has no idea why she's making such a big deal out of it. So what if Army found out she went in the middle of the night? It wasn't banned or anything.

Army frowns. "Do you mind if I take your jacket for a minute?"

"S-sure." She hurriedly takes off her jacket, handing it to Army, who spreads it out on the table. He takes a handful of paper towels and manages to scrape off what had seeped through the fabric, taking no mind of the black goo now all over his hands. 

"White, help me with this?" He hands her the wad of soiled paper towels and White grabs it and tosses it into the trashcan. She brings a new piece and they both work on opening the pocket, which is glued shut by the sticky ink.

Blue meanwhile has approached, watching them for a moment. "Do you need help with that, sir?"

"Yes, actually." Army and White manage to open the pocket, though it seems intent of staying closed. The entryway is blocked by strings of ink, the top of Forge's manual barely visible. "Take the manual out, would you?"

Blue nods and Forge can see him steeling himself before he reaches in and extracts the manual, the end of his sleeve getting stained as well as his hand. "Got it."

"Put it in the sink," Army says and Blue gingerly drops it in the sink, Army picking up Forge's now-soiled jacket and putting it there as well. All three of them wash their hands, and Army turns back to Forge. "You do have one of your spare jackets, right?"

"Yes sir, sorry," Forge says quickly. She feels a twinge of guilt for not offering to handle this herself, considering it was her jacket, and a bit of anxiety for Army not asking her any questions on it, but she goes to fetch her jacket anyway.

The other three are waiting for her when she hurries back out and there's not a single word between them as they exit the base to practice.

\---

She finds out something's wrong when Army's tentacles start to discolor, no matter how much he tried to hide it or how many times he dismissed it as something minor. It only gets worse when she notices White's tentacles are doing the same. Her anxiety practically skyrockets when Blue's tentacles fade as well, and she tries to put it off her mind like her teammates do. They seem a lot more tired lately, more sluggish than usual. 

White comes to a meeting twenty minutes late on the excuse of being too tired, which is unusual in itself, but when Army loses his train of thought, staring off into space for a while before recollecting himself and Blue falls asleep during the very same meeting, Forge is starting to worry a lot more than she usually does.

All of them seem unconcerned with their condition, and Forge feels like she's the only one who has something wrong with her. Surely it wasn't such a big deal.

But she walks in one day on Army in his room, back turned towards her. His coloration seems... off somehow and she moves forward without letting her superior know of her presence. The door shuts behind her with a click and Army still doesn't stir.

"Sir?"

"Forge." Something seems off with her leader's voice and when he turns to face her, she realizes something is very very wrong. His body is melted in places, shifting between that horrid black goo she found on the road and his usual form. Her stomach drops twenty stories to land at her feet. 

"Army--" it's one of the only times she's used his name, but he doesn't react to it. "--what happened?"  
"I  **don** 't kn **o** w." He stands finally, and she backs up, hearts thudding in her chest. He looks so ill, she wouldn't be able to recognize him if she saw him on the street. "I  **thi** nk you  **ne** ed to--" He stops then, and before Forge can react, he lunges towards her, a guttural sound that is  _not_  Army-esque escaping his throat. It's somewhere between a sentence and a screech and it almost makes Forge freeze in her tracks if it weren't for the shout in her head to  _dodge_.

She's not fast, and has never usually been supernaturally quick on her feet. But somehow,  _somehow_  she manages to dodge and she lands with her back to the door as her leader advances on her, body breaking apart and rejoining together in different parts of his body, creating a symphony of ink squelches.

"Army!" she reaches behind her for the doorknob, blindly scrabbling along the wood. She's unable to tear her eyes away from Army's face as his irises shrink into his pupils, turning pitch black. "What are you--"

He launches himself at her again, missing her completely and instead striking the door right above her. She shrieks and curls into a ball as the door falls outwards into the hallway, and she scrambles backwards as Army advances on her. She kicks a broken chunk of wood at the mass of screeching black ink before sprinting down the hallway, pounding on her girlfriend and her brother's doors. 

"White! Blue! Come quickly! Army's been--"

The words die in her throat as White's door swings open to reveal another mass of goo, this one with vaguely long tentacles. "F **or** ge..."

Oh no. Oh no no no. White couldn't be infected with whatever this thing was. Her girlfriend is many things, but she could never be this shapeless black goo that's dripping ink all over the pristine floorboards. 

Forge is certain this has something to do with the goo she was looking at a few nights before, the one her teammates touched but she never made contact with.

"White," she says carefully, backing away slowly. "Are you okay?"

"N **ev** er been b **etter,** " Her girlfriend ends her words in a heartless growl, arms flashing forwards but Forge is ready this time. She hurls herself sideways and nearly falls into Blue's room, the door now open. Blue, thankfully, seems to be himself still, though his ink color is almost completely black. His skin is a pasty grey but Forge refuses to avert her eyes.

"Blue, oh my cod. You're sick, you can't--"

"I know." Blue's face, well, as much as it as she can see that isn't discolored, is grim. "It's Inkblot disease, a highly contagious, terminal disease. There's no cure for it at this point. You just have to get as far away as you can from h **er** e." He winces and staggers backwards, his body starting to melt. "Go!  **N** ow!"

Forge doesn't know that she's crying until the tears slide between her shirt and her skin. "Blue.. I can't leave you three behind. Can't I call the hospital--"

"They won' **t**  be able t **o**  help," Blue says, and she can tell that he's crying too by the lumps of black clustering in the corners of his eyes. "Ple **a** se. You n **e** ed to leave. U **s** e the win **d** ow."

She can hear what used to be White and Army moving around in the hallway, and it fuels her to wrench the window open, casting one last glance at her brother. "I love you."

He smiles the best he can while melting. "Lov **e**  you  **too**."

She slides out of the window in her squid form, escaping through the bushes around the base as she hears a loud slam above her, black ink sizzling overhead to land inches from her face. She turns back into Inkling form and runs all the way to the hospital.

The receptionist stares at her in concern as she stumbles over her words, trying to get out that her team is infected with a disease she hasn't even heard of. 

"Inkblot?" the receptionist finally says, eyes widening. She quickly calls someone -- Forge hopes it's someone who can help because she can barely see or hear due to her tears and the blood rushing in her ears -- and turns to Forge. "Someone is on their way to take your team to quarantine. Have you taken the vaccine?"

"No, none of us did. I didn't even know it existed--"

"Many Inklings don't," the receptionist says. "It's so rare nowadays that it has become a myth."

"Okay, but will my team die?" Forge wishes that whatever Blue said to her isn't true, that they know a way to cure this. 

"If they are in terminal stage, then I'm afraid there's no way to cure them."

No cure. There's no cure. It feels like the world is caving around Forge, like it will end. Her teammates  _can't die_. Her best friend, reduced to nothing more than mindless rage. Her girlfriend, so unfitting of the giant horrendous blob she became, her brother, letting her escape as he succumbed to the disease himself. They aren't invincible, she knows this, but her mind is refusing to let her accept the facts, as much as she has been trained to. They can't die. They can't die. 

The hospital room is spinning, darkening, and hands quickly help her to a nearby seat. "Deep breaths. Deep breaths."

She inhales, exhales, and looks up to meet the receptionist's gaze. "Can I go see them?"  
"They're quarantined wherever they were when you found them," the receptionist tells her and Forge nods, standing. "Hang on, you can't go see them! You could get infected--"

"That's what I'm planning on."

Forge races from the hospital, back to the base, ignoring all the vans parked outside and the safety caution tape. Somehow going unnoticed, she slips under the tape and treads into the house, black goo dripping from the ceiling, the furniture, everywhere. She sidesteps a large puddle on the floor and makes her way down the hallway, path suddenly blocked by a mass of ink.

" **Forge--** " She swallows hard, but stands her ground despite her entire body screaming at her to run. She can't leave them behind. She was the one who had to investigate that goo. She wasn't careful. Her team paid the consequences.This is all her fault, and she has to rectify this, even if it means dying herself.

Forge is fairly certain that whoever this is, they aren't happy to see her, because the figure lunges at her, slopping black ink all over the ground. By some miracle, she manages to back away unharmed but the mass keeps advancing. The figure gets close enough for her to see into their pupils, the goo freezing in its place. It shudders, reforms, and Forge's hearts stop as she stares into the face of her girlfriend.

"White... I'm so sorry," she whispers, swallowing hard. White simply stares at her, the usual brilliant light gone from her eyes. 

"I-- It's all my fault." Forge doesn't know if the other Inkling can hear her or if the disease affected her mind, but she keeps talking anyway, aware of the goo from White's tentacles dripping along her sleeve and over her hand. "I'm so sorry, I thought it was harmless--- But it wasn't, and now you're dying-- I shouldn't have gone out that night, White, I shouldn't have done anything. I'm so stupid. So, so stupid."

White just shudders and melts again, reforming to stare at her with those huge eyes. " **F-Forge..Not... Fault... Sorry...** "

There are tears leaking from her eyes again but Forge doesn't wipe them away, instead facing her girlfriend head on. "It  _is_  my fault, White, and I need to pay for them." She lifts her arm, now dripping with White's residue. "So take me. I don't want to keep living without you."

White coughs and deforms, shaking violently so blobs of goo land on Forge's face and tentacles. " **Die... Can't...No...** "

Her pupils enlarge again, swallowing up her irises and she lashes out, right arm melting to absorb Forge's own arm. The ink stings upon contact but Forge closes her eyes, trying not to show the pain. It envelops her arm up to the elbow, cold against her skin. "White.."

" **I'm sorry.** " There are tears in the infected Inkling as she partially reforms again. " **Forge..** "

Forge, despite the fear telling her to save herself, leans forward, wrapping what's left of her girlfriend in a tight embrace. The ink encloses around her arms, legs, back, head, until she completely absorbed by the mass, White's slight grunts slithering in through her ears until it crawls into her brain and settles there. The ink is freezing cold, until it's not, and Forge's mind is suddenly overtaken by screams and piercing shrieks, mingled with whispers of apologies. She thinks she recognizes White's voice in there, as well as Blue's and Army's but there are many she hasn't heard before. She wants to laugh, but the ink is clogging her throat, filling her lungs. She'll be okay. They'll all be okay. They'll just die together, happy, peaceful. Her mind drifts into the abyss of blissful silence, letting herself go.

This isn't so bad, right? This way no one else can get hurt. No one else...

\--

A paramedic mentions seeing a female Inkling with orange ink crossing the safety tape unannounced, and a search immediately goes up. But when they enter the base, it's just a mass of black goo, all of it shifting in unison. The girl is nowhere to be found.

They search the best they can under the circumstances, but eventually have to give up due to the danger of Inkblot, and they half-heartedly mark her off as dead.

It's a tragic incident, really. The loss of an entire turfing team to a rare disease hits Inkopolis hard, and everyone falls into a tide of mourning, whether they even knew Orange Team personally or not.

The black goo that originally started it all is left there on the side of the road, unnoticed until the S4, lost in grief, visit the remains of Orange Team base. 

Aloha's the first one to see it.

"Hey, over here!" The three of them crouch over the puddle, curiosity getting the best of them. They shouldn't have gotten so close.

" **The S4..** " It sounds like Army, but not Army at the same time. It's a mix of voices, and Aloha swears that he hears the entire Orange Team speak at the same time at some point. " **Your.. mistake--** "

Everyone in the neighborhood hears the splatter of ink and a loud scream but by the time the police are called, the only thing left is a massive pile of black goo.

**Author's Note:**

> do you guys think i write too much angst? :)


End file.
